At Dan Toler memorial, high praise from Betts

Photos of Dan Toler wielding a guitar and flashing an equally powerful smile filled a large screen above the pulpit Saturday, and in the most famous photos he is playing alongside fellow guitarist Dickey Betts.

On Saturday, Betts, dressed in a bolo tie, sports jacket, cowboy hat and matching boots, took an aisle seat five rows back at Sarasota's Faith Presbyterian Church to remember Toler, who died last month from Lou Gehrig's disease at 64.

Betts, the singer, songwriter and guitar great behind such Allman Brothers Band classics as “Ramblin' Man,” “Blue Sky” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” shuns publicity and avoids interviews.

But on Saturday, he talked about the musician he nicknamed “Dangerous Dan.”

“I'm going to miss him and I think that's the best thing you can say about somebody,” Betts later said. “All these people here are going to miss him.”

The memorial service featured a slide show with nearly 300 pictures of Toler over the years, tributes, a gripping gospel performance featuring singer Lauren Mitchell and a recent video message in which Toler spoke passionately about how Christian faith sustained him through his illness.

Toler, who lived in Manatee County, arrived in the Sarasota area in 1975 and played alongside Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Gregg Allman and Betts in the Allman Brothers Band from the late 1970s through the 1980s.

He also played with his brother, drummer David “Frankie” Toler, in several high-profile groups starting with Dickey Betts & Great Southern. David died in 2011, at the age of 59, at the Tidewell hospice care in Bradenton after a prolonged illness following a liver transplant.

In August of that year, shortly after his brother died, Dan announced he had ALS. That month thousands of people attended a fundraiser held for Toler at Aces Live in Bradenton, and in November, Betts & Great Southern headlined a two-day Dan Toler ALS Support Benefit Concert Festival at Herschberger Ranch in Sarasota.

The event found Toler restricted to a wheelchair — and playing brilliant guitar.

“I love Danny,” Betts said. “Living on the road for 50 years, people can give you trouble to the point where you have to get rid of them but, I swear, Danny was a help, just keeping everything going, keeping the family together, he was just a great human being, a great guy who always had a laugh, always had a great sense of humor.”

Pictures of the Toler brothers, as well as the gold record that Dan Toler received for his work on “Enlightened Rogues” as well as one for his playing on Gregg Allman's album “I'm No Angel” were displayed just below the pulpit Saturday.

Toler's career took off when Betts invited him to join his Great Southern ensemble in the mid 1970s, and the two guitar greats traded hot licks in that group for about four years before the Allman Brothers Band reformed and recorded the acclaimed comeback album “Enlightened Rogues” with Toler.

“I nicknamed him ‘Dangerous Dan' because if you didn't have your game on, he'd set you back on your (expletive) heels,” Betts said.

Betts made a point to mention that Toler was the first guitar player to join the Allman Brothers Band following the death of leader Duane Allman, who Betts called the greatest guitarist of them all.

“I just told him to stay away from my style, my style is so easy to fall into, and to not to fall into that pentatonic scale that I do, and he didn't want to, he stayed on his own style,” Betts said of Toler.

“What a guitar player. As far as his diversity and everything, I think he was the best I've ever run across, and I've seen a lot of them.”

Betts, who lives in rural Sarasota, split ways a final time with the Allman Brothers Band in 2000 and Dan Toler rejoined him in Great Southern. Toler appears with Betts on the 2002 album “The Collectors #1.”

“This last go round with Danny when we were really working for a living, after the blowup with the Allman Brothers, I think that was the most special,” Betts said. “We had to really get out there and play, you know, we were right next to the people in smaller clubs, not a whole lot of money, we were just playing for the love it.”

During the past decade, Toler could be frequently seen performing in the Sarasota-Bradenton area with the Toler Tucci band, which featured his old Gregg Allman bandmate Chaz Trippy on percussion. Toler would also sit in with numerous players including next-generation Southern rock luminary Tony Tyler and make appearances at charity events such as Giving Hunger the Blues. All of these musicians and many more Toler had jammed with locally over the years were at the service Saturday.

But of all the players Toler shared the stage with over the years,perhaps no one played a bigger role than Betts in making him a success.

Betts gave Toler his start on a national stage, a memorable nickname and membership in the Allman Brothers Band. But Betts refused to take credit for Toler's success.

“Yeah, but you know what, he earned it.” Betts said. “I didn't do him any favors. He was the best at the time. He earned that spot with me. He deserved that spot. And he covered it.”